The Way Things Were: Kitchen

Small homes are cozy and charming and all those other descriptive words that real estate agents have been marketing, don’t you think? And I’ll admit, so many things about small homes really are cute and charming.

Germans like to have separate spaces for all the different functions in their lives. When you walk into a German home, you are often greeted by a hallway of closed doors. It makes sense in the winter–you only heat the parts of the house that you need, and I don’t know about your house, but no one hangs out in our entryway but the shoes. In our home, this General Theory of Seperate Spaces has totally dissected a piece of the living room. It looks pretty bad, and I really can’t see anyone jumping to cook in there.

What’s a kid to do?

The previous tenants were a little apprehensive about letting us take pictures of their home. I felt kind of bad, too–not just because we were taking pictures of their things, but because they had to manage in such a tiny kitchen space with no storage, no counter, and no dishwasher. I’ve seen bar sinks that were bigger, and I couldn’t even open the oven without standing halfway in the living room.

Their only short-term solution was a second fridge so they could also have a freezer. (The built-in fridge is the white cabinet to the right of those hot pads above the burners.) The only kitchen storage is the cupboards above and below the fridge:

we have a small narrow kitchen as well. Although it is double the size as yours, we have a problem whereby the pantry (built with solid bricks) is within the small kithcen ! argh.. i wish i could just demo. it !

anyway, my question is the wall which you removed seems like a structural one, did you need to get consent for demo. it ?

[…] when I came to Germany, these little suckers had to be the most stressful thing in our original kitchen. Â I could sort of handle the lack of counters, the non-existant storage, and the oven that leaked […]

[…] kitchen in Katie and Martin Clemensâ€™ 480-square-foot apartment in Berlin, Germany, was a disaster when they first saw it. It was claustrophobic and had no drawers, counter space, dishwasher or storage. The previous […]